Marked
by lynlyn
Summary: By coincidence, Kuroro meets Kurapika in NGL. Kuroro, fully recovered from the Judgment Chain, engages the Kuruta in a fight, which he easily wins. He knows about Kurapika's weaknesses, and he isn't afraid to exploit them. Oneshot, implied KuroPika.


**Title** : Marked

**Author** : lynlyn

**Yahoo ID and email **: cloud121383

**Warnings** : Kuroro / Kurapika slash warning, set somewhere during the Chimera Ant arc.

**Rating** : PG-13 for adult themes and violence

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Hunter X Hunter, its characters, or anything associated with it. I'm not writing this for profit; I'm only doing so for personal satisfaction, plus the fact that I want to try my hand at writing semi-professionally. Any resemblance of the characters or the story itself to actual people and situations is entirely unintentional and accidental. Please don't sue – I'm only a college student.

**Notes** : This is cross-posted to my LiveJournal account, and the 30 Kisses LJ community. It's actually an entry for the said community. This isn't connected in any way to Wild Hearts; if you read on, you'll see that Kuroro and Kurapika are still mortal enemies. This is supposed to be a one-shot, but Yukitsu suggested turning it into a series… We'll just have to see if my muses will let me accommodate a third multi-chapter fic.

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The scent of pain, cloying, choking, all-consuming hatred, and the sharp tang of spilled blood permeated the air. The scene was familiar, and yet curiously new at the same time. They had met by pure chance, and in the midst of the battle for superiority between two sentient races, another fight had raged, no less deadly in the damage they had wrought and the convictions at stake.

Kuroro Lucifer gave no quarter this time, unleashing the full range of his abilities, as what he thought was due to the one and only person who had successfully captured him and chained his movements, if just for a short while.

He'd thought wrong. He'd overestimated his opponent. The chain assassin lay crumpled in a heap on the ground in front of him. Perhaps his full power had been too much. That, or the boy had decided, for some reason, not to fight him seriously.

Kuroro could feel it, an undercurrent of sorrow and weariness running behind the hatred of the chain assassin. He couldn't understand it at first. Anything other than total concentration would be fatal in a fight such as theirs, but still the boy thought that he could afford to spare part of his mental faculties for angst.

There came a lull in the carnage around them, the sounds of battle cries and explosions momentarily leveling off, and as if the noise had prevented him from reasoning clearly, Kuroro suddenly understood. The simplest reason was most usually the correct one.

"Get up," he ordered.

The chain assassin didn't move. Kuroro decided to play dirty.

"I didn't take you to be a coward." There, a tiny twitch. "Are you running away from your problems?"

Eyes opened blearily, red eyes that glared up at him through the haze of pain and resignation. Resignation. Normally Kuroro would feel thrilled at seeing his enemy in such a broken state, but now he was infuriated. Annoyed that he had been inconvenienced by someone so weak, so mentally fragile. Because despite the anger, despite the raw power and ability he knew the blonde possessed, the boy had turned out to be nothing more than what he was – a child who had no idea that embarking on a life of vengeance meant giving up part of one's humanity.

"It's coming back to you, isn't it?" Kuroro remarked as the chain assassin got up. The blonde's movements were jerky, and he was extremely slow in standing up – no surprise there, as Kuroro had personally broken several of his bones and inflicted numerous other wounds that would no doubt cause the boy to bleed to death if left untreated.

"The dead never really leave us," he continued, watching the injured young man for any reactions to his words. "Those with strong will and power find ways to remind friends… and _enemies_ alike, of their continued existence." And Kuroro's eyes gleamed in triumph as the chain assassin paled to an impossible white. The famed Scarlet Eyes widened in abject misery and terror… and unbelievably, remorse and shame. How the boy could feel guilt at killing people who had massacred his whole clan was a complete mystery, but it only served to complete Kuroro's psychological profile of the chain assassin.

The blonde chose that moment to speak, the first time Kuroro had heard his voice properly since their fight started, outside of his cries of rage. "But you're not affected… why can't I –"

"Because we don't let petty things like grudges affect us. You're weak."

The blonde predictably snarled at the insult, and he lunged forward with the speed of an affronted feline. Impressive as it was that emotion could give him the strength his failing body could not, the effort was still hindered by the injuries he had sustained, and Kuroro found it easy to restrain the blonde's hands with his own, and shove his opponent's lighter weight against a conveniently-placed wall.

"Not good enough!" _Not enough anger, not enough to fight his fatalism…_ The blonde didn't even try to struggle, as if already knowing that any attempt to fight would be useless. The whole point of Kuroro's baiting was to revive the chain assassin's flagging will to survive, not push him deeper into despair. It would be easy to kill him now – a ridiculously easy murder, Kuroro felt, that would somehow do the last Kuruta alive a disgrace. He knew he was being impractical, but he felt that he deserved something more from the boy…

… who was currently thinking that it would be a good idea not to go along with Kuroro's schemes, whatever he thought they were. He had calmed down as Kuroro thought, unnerving red eyes staring right ahead and through Kuroro with an indescribable determination. Seconds later, just as Kuroro started to wonder at the blonde's intense gaze, he found himself watching in surprise as brilliant red darkened into deep blue. Then the blonde looked up, saw him looking, smiled in grim satisfaction, closed his eyes, and stopped moving altogether.

Kuroro cursed mentally. The blonde was waiting – waiting for his killing blow. He thought he was finally going to be killed, and as some kind of last gesture of defiance, repressed his anger to stop the Scarlet Eyes from manifesting, just to make sure that Kuroro wouldn't find any value in them once he had been killed.

Pain wasn't working, insult wasn't enough, and threat probably wouldn't be effective at this point in time. Kuroro decided to take a page out of Hisoka's book, and looked for the easiest-to-reach, bloodied patch of skin on the blonde. Perhaps humiliation would work better…?

He had to duck down and tilt his head a bit, but once Kuroro found the right position, he took his time and slowly licked at the blood that had pooled at the hollow of the other boy's throat. He immediately felt the blonde's reaction – an immense flinch, and then a shudder, the kind that ran from head to toe. And he couldn't see, but Kuroro knew that sapphire blue eyes must have flown open in shock and disbelief.

The Kuruta was an attractive specimen. At any other time and place Kuroro would have considered bedding him, but now the group's mission came first, and personal intentions needed to be put aside and pursued later. But he had time to leave a mark… something to remind the chain assassin of this latest offense. The blonde remained petrified but for one hitched intake of breath that sounded almost like a terrified sob, when Kuroro nipped hard enough to break his skin.

The boy stayed slack and unmoving when Kuroro released his hands and stepped away; if not for the wall at his back he may have keeled over. For all appearances he looked as if he'd completely broken down, but Kuroro knew that his parody of a kiss had done the trick. The chain assassin's eyes were back to their blood-red color, and looked more luminescent than before, almost glowing with an unworldly light. And he could feel the other's anger returning, outrage blasting through the constricting fog of mingled hopelessness and shock.

Kuroro looked the chain assassin square in the eye and smiled inwardly. If looks could kill, the blonde wouldn't have had any trouble getting rid of him. The killing intent he could see being formed in those unsettling red eyes surpassed even that of the fury he had felt back in York Shin. The boy's nen battered at him, and he would have been driven back if not for his own protective shields.

But, too bad. The Kuruta wasn't in any condition to continue fighting. Nobunaga would probably give him hell, but Kuroro had decided to let the boy go. Not only was he interested in what heights his opponent would be able to reach given enough time and motivation, he was also mindful of the fact that the chain assassin was most likely the last of his race. Kuroro may be a remorseless thief and murderer, but he wasn't completely unappreciative of the value of remnants of lost cultures and civilizations. If he absolutely needed to kill the last Kuruta alive, he preferred to do so when the Geneiryodan could stand to profit from the blonde's demise.

So Kuroro gave the chain assassin one last smirk, then turned around. He had barely taken a step before the boy recovered enough to question his motives.

"What are you doing?"

Kuroro half-turned to see the Kuruta watching him. "I'm letting you live for now. Go find your doctor friend and get yourself healed. I find no meaning in killing you in your present state."

"What?"

"Meaning. Value. Worth. Significance. Pleasure. Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Right now, you're not worth my time. If you think that being able to kill Ubogin automatically makes you strong enough to fight the rest of us, then you're sorely mistaken."

The chain assassin flinched, and Kuroro knew that he had struck another nerve. A tiny voice at the back of his mind informed him that he was acting more and more like Hisoka, but he couldn't even begin to decipher the origin of the anticipation thrumming through his senses… and an almost delicious, primal heat that swirled at the core of his being as he pulled at the coppery aftertaste of the boy's blood in his mouth. Kuroro forced the unsettling emotions away, and he smiled at the blonde predatorily.

"Next time, come after me with everything you have. Another performance like this and we'll kill you, then just to make our efforts worthwhile, we'll go after your friends – the strengthening kid, the Zaoldyeck, and the doctor."

Extortion was one of the least honorable tricks in his book, but sometimes it was the only thing that got the friends-first martyr types moving. From what his subordinates had told him, Kuroro knew that the enemy was intelligent enough to accept an escape route when offered, even if it meant suffering a humiliating defeat, but just the same he waited a few seconds to make sure that the Kuruta wouldn't try to stop him again. The blonde didn't move, except to slide bonelessly down the wall, and he'd averted his still-red eyes from Kuroro's gaze, perhaps as some kind of concession…

Kuroro walked away, and wind blew smoke to block his figure from the chain assassin's sight… A sight that he knew would remain obscured by hatred until either of them died…

--- end ---


End file.
